Star Control II from the 90s if my favourite game of all-time and recently, Stardock Entertainment released a spiritual successor called Star Control: Origins, that is among my favourite games of 2018. Starting late in the game's development, the original creators of the Star Control series entered into a heated legal battle with Stardock, resulting in a lot of public mud slinging and most recently, Star Control: Origins being pulled from Steam and GOG due to DMCA complaints made with very suspiciuous timing. It's a very complicated issue with no clear indication of who is fully in the right.

I discuss the mess from a hardcore fan's perspective and though I believe it appears Stardock is more in the right here, try to provide as balanced a perspective as I can and also appeal to both sides to try and figure this out, for the fan's sake.

Though these are long, I highly recommend reading and watching the following if you want to be informed of just how complicated this dispute is:

Stardock Q&A: https://www.stardock.com/games/starcontrol/article/487690/qa-regarding-star-control-and-paul-and-fred

Virtual Legality Episode from Hoeg Law: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVJIgLnDbcQ

Leonard French Video (Part 1): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=it50gS5yYB4

Leonard French Video (Part 2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yochP8F69LY

Twitch is currently facing heavy backlash from a lot of their creators and viewers because they are running pre-roll ads for Ninja's New Year's Eve stream on other channels, including other partners. I talk about why I think this is a bad look and a short-sighted plan by a company becoming more and more out of touch with its creators but also how this may very well become more common in the future and why those of us not on Twitch, should be vigilant.

The article about Justin Wong I reference during the episode: https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/former-twitch-executive-explains-why-the-ninja-pre-roll-situation-will-keep-happening-267678

Today, I awoke to an unexpected new controversy involving the discovery that a partnered Mixer streamer is apparently, a convicted sexual predator, one that has served their time but is on a registry. Several other prominent Mixer streamers (including at least one partner) have been calling for Mixer to terminate the partnership and ban the streamer. The platform has been accused of sweeping the issue under the rug and some of those not calling for this person's immediate banning have come dangerously close to being accused of defending pedophiles.

I talk about my perspective on this issue, as someone who has no interest in defending the accused but who also believes that this issue should be handled by proper channels, not out in public and that when a person has done their time, perhaps that should carry more weight than it does.

This is the audio version of a YouTube vlog that can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOuJ9j2dvbM. I talk a about the year that was and what my content plans are for 2019, including Mixer, YouTube, this podcast and some other things. This is a bit long but that's because there's a lot to talk about. Check below for time indexes so that you can skip topics that don't interest you and please let me know your feedback.

0:00 - Introduction

1:48 - Personal Year In Review

4:55 - Content Plan Overview

6:54 - Mixer and Why I'm Staying There (Link Below)

11:17 - New Podcast (Link Below)

13:14 - Mixer Changes & New Indie Show with theSHED

19:01 - YouTube Changes

29:02 - New Content Creator Technical Community

32:04 - Conclusion

My podcast episode on eliminating caffeine: https://anchor.fm/geekbravado/episodes/Episode-4-09122018-Going-Caffeine-Free-for-ADHD-e2nr5p

Follow me on Mixer at https://mixer.com/PXAbstraction for multiple variety streams a week.

Check out theSHED Team: https://theshedteam.com

Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/PXAbstraction

Join my Discord: http://discord.pxa.ca

Check out Overtone: http://overtone.pxa.ca

A few major AAA game releases have failed pretty hard this year. As a result, many commentators and forum posters are hand-wringing about this being a sign of another impending video game crash, something we haven't seen since the 80s but which is regularly prophecised. This is nonsense in my opinion and one need only look at the rest of the AAA industry in 2018 to see why. I go into detail about this and why these failures can in some ways, be a good thing.

Facebook has had a near non-stop wave of scandals in 2018 and a growing number of poeple are telling people to quit the site. At the same time, a lot of these discussions inevitably turn to people going "Well you use Google and they're just as bad!" As someone who uses Google daily and quit Facebook in 2010, I disagree with this. I go into detail about why and also why despite my claims that Google isn't the same, also understand that they are no saint of a company either.